Opening on Saturday 30 November 2024, the 11th chapter of the Gallery’s flagship exhibition series — the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art — will feature seventy artists, collectives and projects from more than 30 countries. We look back at all ten of the previous Triennial’s memorable installations on the Queensland Art Gallery Watermall, dating back to the first Triennial in 1993 — and give you a peek at the current installation by Thai artist Mit Jai Inn, featuring in our 11th Triennial. The Queensland Art Gallery was designed in harmony with the Brisbane River, and the Watermall runs parallel to the waterway that threads through the city. This grand indoor water feature is a visitor favourite — the perfect backdrop for spectacular contemporary art installations. Do you have a favourite Watermall artwork from the Triennial? 11th Asia Pacific Triennial | 30 November 2024 – 27 April 2025 Now on display for the 11th chapter of the Triennial, Thai artist Jai Inn has carefully orchestrated a series of works to inhabit the Watermall. Drawing on the structures of suspended ‘totems’, a scroll and a tunnel, Jai Inn’s response to the space’s unique architecture explores time and transformation. With these large-scale sculptural works, the artist has created layered views that reveal and conceal to enact portals between worlds. 10th Asia Pacific Triennial | 4 December 2021 – 25 April 2022 Kamruzzaman Shadhin has been at the forefront of developing new possibilities for contemporary art in Bangladesh. Suspended over the Watermall for the tenth Triennial in 2021, The fibrous souls was a collaborative installation with the Gidree Bawlee Foundation of Arts. Constructed with 70 giant shikas — embroidered, reticulated bags typically made of jute strings that are tied to an exposed beam — the installation explores part of Bengal’s colonial history, inspired by the families that followed the railway tracks after the British East India Company established the Eastern Bengal Railway. Shadhin worked with 13 women along with a handful of local craftspeople to create the pots and connecting jute ropes that laid out a map of the historic railway. 9th Asia Pacific Triennial | 24 November 2018 – 28 April 2019 My forest is not your garden was a collaborative installation by Singaporean artists Donna Ong and Robert Zhao Renhui. A critical take on attitudes towards the natural world of the tropics, this work for the ninth Triennial in 2018 integrated Ong’s evocative arrangements of artificial flora and tropical exotica — titled From the tropics with love — with Zhao’s The Nature Museum, an archival display narrating aspects of Singapore’s natural history, both authentic and fabricated. 8th Asia Pacific Triennial | 21 November 2015 – 10 April 2016 South Korean artist Haegue Yang transforms spaces through light, colour, objects and movement to ensure a constant shift in perception and experience. Installed for the eighth Triennial in 2015, Sol LeWitt Upside Down — Open Modular Cubes (Small), Expanded 958 Times consists of 1012 white Venetian blinds, arranged into grids and suspended from the Watermall ceiling in an inverted and expanded rendition of the ‘open modular cube’ structures, signature works of American conceptual artist Sol LeWitt (1928–2007). Yang has created an arrangement of ready-made household blinds whose overlapping slats may be read as either open or closed, depending on the position of the viewer. 7th Asia Pacific Triennial | 8 December 2012 – 14 April 2013 Ressort by Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping, was one of the signature works of the seventh Triennial in 2012. The gigantic aluminium snake skeleton dominated the Watermall as it spiraled 53 metres from the ceiling to the floor, coming down from the sky with its skull floating just above the water, metaphorically linking sky and water. Part of a series of large-scale sculptures that depict a snake or dragon, a central symbol in Chinese culture, as well as in many other countries around the world, the work plays on different interpretations of the snake, from creation and temptation to wisdom and deception. 6th Asia Pacific Triennial | 5 December 2009 – 5 April 2010 Pakistani artist Ayaz Jokhio’s major architectural project in the Watermall for the sixth Triennial in 2009, entitled a thousand doors and windows too…, took the form of an octagonal building, with each wall containing a mihrab, the niche in a mosque that points toward Mecca. The soaring structure takes its inspiration from a verse by Bhittai, the great Sindhi Sufi poet of the late Mughal era. Jokhio considers the work a piece of ‘conceptual architecture’; a physical translation of Bhittai’s expression of the omnipresence of God. 5th Asia Pacific Triennial | 2 December 2006 – 27 May 2007 Composed of 270 000 crystal pieces, Boomerang — first exhibited in the fifth Triennial in 2006 — is an imposing example of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s strategy of working playfully across cultural contexts. Shaped after the iconic Australian Aboriginal throwing tool, this oversized, intensely lit, waterfall-style chandelier filled the soaring space above the Watermall as if it were in a hotel’s grand foyer. Ai Weiwei has a history of bringing everyday things into art museum settings. He has long acknowledged the influence of early-twentieth-century artist Marcel Duchamp, who famously brought otherwise banal objects into a gallery and declared them art, thereby creating the ‘readymade’. Accordingly, Boomerang takes the chandelier, with its connotations of wealth and opulence, and enlarges it to absurd scale, shaping it into the motif of an object associated with exotic conceptions of Australia. 4th Asia Pacific Triennial | 12 September 2002 – 27 January 2003 Narcissus garden is an incarnation of the reflective work that has held Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s attention for many years. Kusama creates a floating carpet of mirrored spheres, the balls reflecting the building’s architecture back onto itself from an infinite number of angles, creating a world that is both trapped and indefinite. Comprising approximately 2000 mirrored balls, the spectacular and mesmerising installation is shaped by both the currents and the limits of the water. 3th Asia Pacific Triennial...

For more than three decades, the much-anticipated, home-grown exhibition — The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art — has showcased an evolving mix of the most exciting and important developments in contemporary art from across Australia, Asia and the Pacific. It’s been instrumental to shaping the Gallery and Brisbane’s identity and global prominence. As our team prepare for the 11th chapter of QAGOMA’s flagship exhibition series opening Saturday 30 November 2024 across the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, we share 11 Triennial highlights. #1 The inaugural Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in 1993 was the first project of its kind in the world to focus on the contemporary art of Asia and the Pacific. In undertaking the Triennial, the Gallery recognised the need for an ongoing series of exhibitions and forums which initiated dialogue on the art of this important geo-political region. Among the most memorable contributions to the first Triennial, Japanese artist Shigeo Toya’s Woods III (illustrated) became one of the first large-scale installations to enter the Gallery’s Collection. Whether you’re reconnecting with the work or it’s going to be your first time, experience walking among the 30 elaborately carved tree trunks at the Queensland Art Gallery until 27 January 2024. #2 The number of artists and collectives involved since the first Triennial is now over 840, including 70 joining us for the 11th Triennial with the latest Queensland Art Gallery Watermall installation by Thai artist Mit Jai Inn (illustrated). #3 The number of artworks shown since the first Triennial stretches to more than 3000. In the third Triennial, then emerging Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang returned with his narrow bamboo suspension bridge, after also being included in the second chapter. Bridge Crossing (illustrated) spanned the Queensland Art Gallery’s Watermall, enchanting visitors with a spritz of fine mist when they successfully made it past the central point. Cai, now famous for his large-scale installations, gunpowder drawings and explosion events, went on to produce the fireworks for the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, before returning to QAGOMA in 2013 with his spectacular installations inspired by the Queensland landscape for the exhibition ‘Falling Back to Earth’. #4 The Asia Pacific Triennial is built on extensive research and travel by QAGOMA curators, with the process beginning on the next Triennial before the previous one ends. We look at what’s happening across the region, what we want to learn more about, combined with conversations with artists in studios, homes and eateries, locally, in global Asian cities and distant Pacific island archipelagos. The Triennial’s vibrant character is kept current by a remarkable network of personal and professional connections between past and present artists, curators, writers. #5 Every Triennial has featured artists from contemporary art communities that have not previously been represented in Australia, including from Bangladesh, Iran, Mongolia, Cambodia, Myanmar, North Korea (DPRK), Tibet and Turkey. These are places many of us never get to visit in our lifetime. Continuing the tradition, works by artists from Uzbekistan, Saudia Arabia and Timor-Leste are included for the first time in the 11th Triennial. The Mansudae Art Studio, an official artist studio in Pyongyang, North Korea (DPRK), which employs artists across the disciplines of painting, drawing, embroidery and mosaics, created work specifically for the sixth Triennial in 2009 (illustrated). #6 Construction of the new Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) began in 2004 and was completed in 2006 for the launch of the ‘The 5th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ when Indonesian artist Eko Nugroho’s enormous mural It’s all about the Destiny! Isn’t it? (illustrated) greeted the visitor as they entered GOMA for the first time. Displayed across both Gallery sites, the exhibition was instantly twice the size of its previous incarnations. We were the first Australian state gallery with a second building devoted to contemporary art and GOMA is often cited as a catalyst for a cultural shift in Brisbane and Queensland. The reputation of the Triennial, already successful, was boosted and its attendance shot into the hundreds of thousands. #7 An overwhelming response to the introduction of Children’s Art Centre programming in 1998 encouraged the Gallery to focus on delivering innovative programs for our youngest visitors. Launched in 1999, the Kids’ Triennial has become a much-anticipated component, since presenting over 80 projects in collaboration with more than 90 artists, including seven for the upcoming 11th chapter. The installation of renowned Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s The obliteration room (illustrated), the popular children’s project commissioned for the fourth Triennial in 2002, took interactive artwork to a new scale. The gallery space was transformed into a series of domestic-style rooms painted entirely white that were ‘obliterated’ through the application of brightly coloured dot stickers. The installation has had many incarnations since. #8 Cinema programs exploring the region have made the Triennial a dynamic cross media exhibition. Opening in December 2006 for the fifth Triennial, the Gallery’s Australian Cinémathèque at GOMA has presented over 25 curated programs featuring 1280 feature films, shorts and video artworks during the past six Triennials, with another six curated programs featuring some 100 screenings scheduled for the 11th chapter. #9 Since 2007, regional Queensland has had a taste of the Triennial too. The Kids on Tour series takes artist-designed activities to young audiences throughout the state, and travelling exhibitions have brought Triennial highlights from the Gallery’s Collection to venues across Queensland. Altogether, 80 000 people have now experienced the Triennial through touring exhibitions and programs. #10 Contemporary live music has electrified the Asia Pacific Triennial over the years, with performances from musicians as border-defying and genre-bending as the visual artists whose work is on display. From British-Indian producer and tabla player Talvin Singh’s official artist inclusion in 2006 to Syrian electro-folk sensation Omar Souleyman’s raucous Watermall performance in 2012 (illustrated) to Indigenous Australian rapper BARKAA captivating a crowd in 2021, performers from around the...